General theme: Lonergan: A Review--What issues need to be addressed?
Specific theme: Bridging the Gulf--Education as Implementation

Introduction

Let us begin from an understanding that Bernard Lonergan’s contributions to philosophy and theology (Insight: A Study of Human Understanding [1958 & 2000] was first published in 1958) are worth mediating to a
larger audience—to the various fields of study, and to one’s personal
life—namely, insight into insight and all of the ins-and-outs of personal self-appropriation-affirmation.
By “larger” I mean an audience beyond "Lonergan scholarship” and beyond
those who already are convinced of its import; and whether that
conviction is based on uncritical belief, or on a set of developing
direct and reflective insights. From that beginning, let us recall that
in Lonergan Workshop 17, Fred Crowe writes:

My
hope is that by the end of this century the basic idea of the four
levels will be part of our general culture; so much so that to explain
them, and still more to prove them, will be quite boring. Pupils
leaving primary school will be as familiar with this structure as they
are with, say, the golden rule. (2002)

If
we are right about mediating Lonergan’s contributions, and if Dr.
Crowe’s vision for education is to occur, then we who have found
universal import in those contributions are charged with finding ways
to bring Lonergan’s insights to a broader audience. It follows that if
we are to be heard, then one of our entrances into the dialogue must be
through the door of empirical-secular concerns, and particularly in the
field of education. To do so, we will need to take general empirical method, at least as applied theory, as the central empirical basis and as the focus and object of our communications.

Section I: The Gulf--Impediments to Communication

With
the above in mind, I suggest that at least six problems hinder teachers
and writers (who recognize the importance of Lonergan’s work) from
being heard: These hindrances are abbreviated here but developed
further on a blogsite (King, 2009) and in the appendixes herewith.

Our first hindrance is
the marginalization of the human sciences from the natural and physical
sciences in Western history, and of philosophy and theology from
all—which, in turn, has led to a long-standing fragmentation of-and-in
all knowledge fields, and in a good part of common discourse. Lonergan
saw that the whole project of philosophy and theology needed to be
re-thought from bottom to top, as it were, and in terms of the ongoing
influences of the scientific revolution, both good and bad.

In brief, first, that revolution exposed the question of knowledge and its connection to the truth-reality complex; and second,
it laid bare the relationship of knowledge, etc., to doctrine and to
the doctrinal, religious, and political authority of the day.

As
many of us here understand, to date, only Lonergan’s work has supplied
us with the avenue for a newly differentiated metaphysics, and for a
cohesiveness of persons and fields through his regard for thoroughly understanding what it is to understand ….

For
the brevity of this presentation, let us assume this movement of
marginalization as Lonergan’s historical context and go on to some
specifics of communicating Lonergan’s work from within that context
(2009). (For further development of this section, See Appendix 1)

The second hindrance,
then, is the existence of various and divisive camps centered on name
recognitions and on specific technical conceptualizations. We are
talking about human studies--and because of the flow of philosophical
meaning that has come “down” to us from the scientific revolution
(Cartesian dualism, mechanism, relativism, etc.), we find “Lonergan”
and other thinkers isolated as various camps of thought. Such camps
emerge from the very variety of philosophical biases, viewpoints, and
issues that Lonergan critiques in Insight through his call for self-reflection and in his notion of a self-appropriation-affirmation, and of transcendental method and its theory of knowledge, and through his treatment of those biases and counter-positions. (See Appendix 2) (Transcendental method is equivalent to what he means by general empirical method.)

Our third hindrance flows
from the first two: We can point to the difficulty of communicating a
philosophical generalist’s writings to such disparate, autonomous, and
fragmented fields (maintaining a camp won’t do), or to gaining an
audience for comparative analysis of camp theory, including in
philosophy itself. The difficulty manifests in a pervasive sense of
arbitrariness and in multiple and diverse concepts that lack a language
of equivalence, in meaning, and in methods; and, again, in the vast
foundational differences that Lonergan gave treatment to in Insight (1958 & 2000--see particularly Chapter 14, The Method of Metaphysics).

For our fourth hindrance, we can point to esoterica:
Many of Lonergan's writings are quite technical and long, as they must
be, considering that his target is not the objects of what he called
extroverted consciousness (1958, p. 423; & 2000, p. 448), or mere
logic and concept, but also readers’ self-reflective capacities and our
full foundational development and corrective, especially from general bias or a disregard for theory.

Here,
however, and for our purpose of opening communication venues, we find a
great gulf, and the major difficulty of connecting Insight,
etc., not to mention Lonergan’s aim, with common discourse and
experience, and-or with the philosophical capacity of undergraduate, or
even high school students. One semester will not do, especially when we
consider the full sweep of what Lonergan was trying--not to convey, but
to bring about. (Hand a copy of Insight to a K-12 teacher, and see what happens.)

Further,
the writings often assume a basic understanding of science,
mathematics, logic, and philosophy (and their terminologies) that many
in a broader audience, whom we want to engage, do not have. In my own
experience with teaching K-12 teachers, many are quite open-minded,
critical, and astute; and they all care greatly for their students'
development. However, many also are working from what Lonergan might
recognize as an IN-sufficiently cultured consciousness. (See Appendix 3)

For our fifth hindrance, we can point to Insight’s later chapters’ and to Method in Theology’s apparent limitation to a religiously oriented audience, or even to Christian and particularly Catholic theologians.

Here,
I do not criticize, diminish, or set aside the religious point of view,
religious consciousness, or authentic religious conversion. Rather, I
speak of a lack of distinction between (a) philosophical and (b)
religious/theological aspects in Lonergan's writings and in much that
has flowed from it since he graced us with his presence. Though
Lonergan’s own interest is in the whole human quest--emphasize "whole,"
in today’s world, the oft-combining of philosophical and religious
narrative can foster misunderstanding in a more secularly-grounded
audience—and one who may see no difference between religious and
theological discourse.

(Note that the June 2009 Lonergan
conference at Boston College is named: Collaboration--in the Year of
St. Paul. Of course there is nothing inherently "wrong" with this
title. However, for those who are averse to combining religious with
academic or scientific pursuits, the combination is off-putting.)

Many
(in my experience) wrongly assume that a study of Lonergan’s work must
begin in certain religious assumptions and, thus (apparently), and
though remarkably intelligent, its writer begins uncritically from a
prescribed belief, faith, doctrinal, ideological or, more remotely,
from a from-above-downward or classicist set of views. If the critique
were true, of course, by secular and critical-empirical/methodological
standards, such arguments would rightly render Lonergan’s work
irrelevant to all but the most devoted of religious followers. (See
Appendix 4)

We find our sixth hindrance squarely
on the side of the individual reader. And with Lonergan, we know we
must meet the reader where they are—but there lies the paradox. That
is, as with many philosophical matters, the polymorphism of mind that Lonergan treats is itself an impediment to mediating his work to a larger audience. Those impediments are rooted:

(1) in a lack of philosophical development;

(2)
in the stunning array of unconsciously inherited foundational “lenses”
that emerge in unison with clear thought when prompted by philosophical
discussion; and

(3) in consciously appropriated but inadequately conceived views (given high treatment in Insight as biases and counter-positions). (See also Piscitelli's development of what he refers to as lower viewpoints [1985].)

Further, these impediments are commonly held together tightly by what I call a foundational dogmatism--an aversion to self-reflection and an unwillingness to address one's own foundational viewpoints or lenses.

Such
lenses greatly influence our understanding of everything in our
purview. However, a reflective and theoretical self-inspection of such
lenses is presently missing from our common educational experience (in
the United States, and in my experience of several educational venues).
Or as Lonergan states, our suggested audience is rarely “very far from a set of assumptions that are neither formulated or scrutinized” (Lonergan, 1958, p. 416; 2000, p. 441).

Generally
stated, the assumption and sometimes-statement is: “My knowing already
works for me, so why go into it?” Translated, such statements mean that
general empirical method is already at work in the speaker; and one of the counter-positions, for instance, relativism,
are next-up for killing the philosophical baby in its crib, as it were.
The complaint, you might say, is inconsistency of thought, and you
would be right. However, such is the case with the meaning of polymorphism of mind. (See Appendix 5)

Conclusion to Part 1

For
many reasons, then, many highly intelligent and well-meaning thinkers
who may have neither “formulated nor scrutinized” their own sets of
assumptions (e.g., teachers, where a treatment of general bias is
particularly important), can miss being introduced to a body of work
that provides a critical avenue for such scrutiny and formulation for
themselves and for their students.

Thus, our relatively
isolated field of “Lonergan studies” suffers from briefly-put—the
gulf--the lack of well-defined, secularly useful (empirically based),
curriculum-development strategies drawn from Lonergan’s work and based
in a clear pedagogical method for teachers, for students of philosophy
in early study, for the renaissance reader, and for the open-minded
specialist in any knowledge field and profession. Such strategies are
needed, and are appropriate to departments of education--the only
hopeful ground for methodological entrance into Kindergarten-12
applications. (See Appendix 6)

Section II: The Caveat for Implementation

I
point to a disjunctive, then, between (1) an all-too-common need for
philosophical development and guided self-correction, particularly in
teachers who covertly pass down philosophical polymorphism to their
students; and (2) an accessible pedagogical path to grasp a core of
critically established insights drawn from Lonergan’s contributions to
philosophy, and particularly to the philosophy of education. Though the
religious question (not yet doctrine) does constitute the remote context of all study, it cannot be the beginning point of secular study.

Here
is the caveat, however. If done fully and well the philosophical
journey is long, and cannot be otherwise (1958, p. xxiii; & 2000,
p. 17). If so, such a disjunctive calls for a difficult but
ever-present task on the part of we mediators:

To present core
but distinct aspects of Lonergan’s contributions to differentiated and
varied audiences and venues in relatively abbreviated format--however,
(and this is the hard part) to do so without telescoping the
philosophical journey or without vulgarizing Lonergan’s or others’
associated work—without cutting them to pieces and leaving the
essentials behind--without missing the point that recovering such a
core needs to be “painstaking and slow” for each person; and that such
a recovery is central to the history of philosophy, to the sciences and
humanities and to education for the “common culture” (Lonergan, 1958,
p. xxiii & p. 544; & 2000, p. 17 & p. 568).

(In today’s environment, I fear to say “liberal education” for the common culture.)

Further, in the Preface to Insight,
Lonergan says that, if we are to build a whole ship or a philosophy,
“incompleteness is equivalent to failure” and, “against the flight from
understanding half measures are of no avail” (1958, p. xiv; & 2000,
p. 7). Again, he suggests a long and comprehensive journey. And as Hugo
Meynell related over coffee earlier in our conference here, Fred Crowe
has remarked that: if you are doing Lonergan briefly, you are not doing
Lonergan.

Also, Phil McShane quotes Lonergan as saying: “I can’t put all of Insight
into two weeks of talk” (McShane, 2009). Nor should we think we can do
so, or in one three-month course, in equivalent fashion.

The distinction:
In my own journey into method and language (Piscitelli, 1977), I found
a neat, relatively brief, pedagogical-experimental connection between
(1) the reader’s experience of language and (2) conscious structure.
However, the same problem of adequate presentation still hovered for
years and needed to be worked out.

The insight that finally emerged was this: To mediate to education what Lonergan means by self-appropriation-affirmation with
any hope of maintaining its relationship with what must be
“painstakingly slow,” I needed to distinguish (1) a shorter
philosophical journey (my original insight of offering a brief
experimental connection) from (2) a longer philosophical journey
(foundational development and corrective, or what Lonergan and others
are trying to convey in writings like Insight—see 2000, pp. 422-23, & 1958, pp. 397-98;). So, half of the problem was to define the problem clearly.

The Treatment

Making
the distinction between the two journeys allowed the problem of two
different but related treatments to emerge: I had to find a way to (1)
isolate the central briefer experiment while (2) making the
experimenter aware of, and maintaining a clear and constant invitation
to, experience those potential deeper philosophical insights—only
afforded by the longer journey. To fail in this communication of a
proper distinction-in-relation would be to telescope and
vulgarize--like building half-a-ship, or like planting a tree in poor
soil—the ship will not float, and neither tree nor experiment will
flourish.

Indeed, if the experiment is to flourish I must make
clear the longer journey in the shorter. I must make clear the richness
and complexity of the writing from which the shorter journey is drawn (Insight, etc.). First,
I must constantly convey the potential for much further personal
development and self-reflection with regard to reader foundations.

Second,
within that context, I must convey a need for self-knowledge and the
self-correction that can follow with regard to the experimenter’s
philosophical inheritance (i.e., biases, counter-positions, attitudes,
etc.).

And third, I must mirror the need for new
development--of distinctions and interrelationships forged from an
apprehension of theory, of a theory, and of those theoretical insights
applied critically to that longer self-reflective journey.

In
other words, the text and teaching must convey what I am referring to
here as an understanding that the shorter journey can deliver
scientific-to-personal exploration and critical verification of a
theory of mind (it can--the Finding the Mind
classroom text affords this shorter journey.) However, it also must
convey that the longer journey awaits us all and goes beyond--to
include major internal change, foundational development and
self-correction, a treatment of the flight from understanding, and what Lonergan refers to as a heightening of your own rational self-consciousness
around various deeply felt but now fully conscious and critically known
experiences—or in a word, comprehensive and critically established
self-knowledge.

As an historical aside, let us recall Plato’s
setting out the difference between Socrates (1) as teacher, which he
disclaims, and (2) as midwife, which he claims for himself, the
philosopher. In terms of the shorter journey, the teacher can teach
about self-appropriation-affirmation; and we can even take
readers through a critically established process pointing to the remote
but clearly present basic structure and set of operations within the
self—all in a scientific-objectivist way. However, the
philosopher-as-midwife is involved in what I am referring to as the
longer journey. Here, the philosopher assists the seeker-person through
various deeply felt, but no less critical, developments and
corrections—or to use the midwife metaphor, the philosopher helps birth
someone into the philosophical life—though, as Socrates knew,
stillbirths always can occur in the birthing process. (See Appendix 7)

Of
course, Lonergan himself was involved with the longer journey, which
includes the shorter. Whereas teaching to the shorter journey without
midwifery into the longer journey defines what he and McShane refer to
as a vulgarization of his work and of philosophy; and I would add of
education in general.

And this brings us to a seventh hindrance, which is specific to education. In that sense, much of what goes by the name education
in the USA, especially in K-12, is more of a vulgarization of the
educative experience (often rightly defined but not as often practiced
in education circles as a “leading out”) than it is an increase-in or a
deepening-of spirit that education in the fullest sense can be and, I
with many others argue, should be.

So introducing such work to
the field of education is fraught with the same problems as mediating
to individuals, only here, and though much open-mindedness can be
found, the problems and omissions have become institutionalized. (See
Appendixes 6 and 7)

Thus,
I undertake the task of distinguishing and writing specifically for the
shorter and then longer journeys, for the sake (1) of approaching a
broader audience of readers than Lonergan’s or many others’ bodies of
work presently attract; and (2) of providing a critical introductory
foundational text for education, for personal development and for
philosophy and, with some adjustments, for the humanities and other
departments of learning where foundations are of interest. Both are
offered with the reader’s autonomy-of-choice in mind in the matter of
taking on more pervasive philosophical studies though, of course again,
I heartily recommend such a journey.

And so the experiment as written—Finding the Mind--is an introduction to, but not a proffered short-cut to, a philosophical education. The text is divided into a Preface, an Introduction and two basic parts:

First,
as structure, at the front of the book are the chapters that guide the
reader methodically through the experiment as the shorter journey.

The second section
is constituted by several appendices treating various philosophical
issues that are touched on, but not developed well in the experiment,
e.g., self-presence, the pervasiveness of the good, objectivity,
knowledge and deriving ought from is, etc.

More covertly, the text conditions the reader for the different conversions, especially for what Lonergan refers to as intellectual conversion. To avoid the term conversion and its "baggage," let us refer to the experience as foundational insights as distinct from informational insights.
Foundational insights change the ground for all informational insights
and open new horizons for us with regard to everything we think, say,
and do.

Thus, generally speaking, the layered structure of the text mimics the layered structure of internal meaning:

The
appendixes, then, provide a bridge--or access to a deeper layer of
potential self-reflection—reader foundations (layers 2). They are meant
to inspire the reader’s potential for taking that longer philosophical,
and perhaps spiritual, journey; whereas participating in the experiment
can only take us on a critical-scientific, but relatively “extroverted”
tour of the philosophical journey; hence its name: The shorter journey.
(In my experience in the classroom, though the verification of the
theory is secured by all, the event of "finding the mind" varies with
the specific situation of the student--or, "where they are" presently
in their philosophical state of affairs.)

Such an abbreviated experiment alone, then, can introduce the reader to, but cannot take us through, that longer journey of interior development and corrective that is meant to occur by the use of a moving viewpoint in Insight—the journey that, at times, is known to momentarily unsettle us and, at times, even turns us upside down in our heads. “… and one has not made it yet if one has no clear memory of its startling strangeness …” (1958, p. xxviii; 2000, p. 22).

In
turn, that journey is recursive--it will eventually lend a newly
understood quality to the briefer experiment, and to its singular
purpose of readers personally verifying the theory and of finding and
verifying the basic structure and activities of their own mind, albeit
if only in a critical-objectivist and scientific sort of way.

Furthermore, mediation includes a twofold pedagogical task: First,
we need to quickly gain and hold reader-interest (and student-interest
for teachers), in this case, for mediation into the field of education.

… the method of metaphysics is
primarily pedagogical: it is headed towards an end that is unknown and
as yet cannot be disclosed; from the viewpoint of the pupil, it
proceeds by cajoling or forcing attention and not by explaining the
intended goal and by inviting an intelligent and reasonable cooperation
(1958, 397; & 2000, p. 422-23)

Second,
and again, we need to keep the longer and more comprehensive project of
philosophical learning constantly in view as readers go through the
experiment. In Finding the Mind, the first task is met by the
relative brevity of the experiment (it can be completed in a
one-semester course), and by drawing our experimental data from the
reader’s own experience of language for use as the critical-controlling
factor throughout the experiment.

….”introspection”
may be understood to mean, not consciousness itself but the process of
objectifying the contents of consciousness. Just as we move from the
data of sense through inquiry, insight, reflection, judgment, to
statements about sensible things, so too we move from the data of
consciousness through inquiry, understanding, reflection judgment, to
statements about conscious subjects and their operations. That, of
course, is just what we are doing and inviting the reader to do at the
present time. But the reader will do it, not by looking
inwardly, but by recognizing in our expressions the objectification of
his subjective experience. (Lonergan, 1972, pp. 8-9)

The second task is met by the constant foreshadowing and invitation in the
text towards further study and self-examination provided for in the
appendixes, references, and in the unique treatment and structure of
the text. (The text’s structure is similar to this paper and to a
webpage where clicking on the blue print takes you to deeper sections
of the text.) As pedagogy, then, the experiment’s relative brevity
makes it appropriate for formal classroom use. (See Appendix 8)

Section 4—Demonstration

If there is time, I will give a brief demonstration of the experiment developed in Finding the Mind.

Piscitelli, E. J. (1977). Language and method in the philosophy of religion: A critical study of the development of the philosophy of Bernard Lonergan. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.

Let
us give only a brief treatment of this context by considering “the gap”
(one of several) that was exposed during the scientific revolution.

Twentieth
century philosophy and theology inherited this upside-down, or
right-side up, state of affairs, depending on your view; and Lonergan
gave treatment to it in his Insight and other works (1958,
pp. 732-33; & 2000, pp. 754-55). So that no matter what problems of
communication are present in Lonergan’s work, that post-enlightenment
context—the “gap” where the problem of knowledge lives--already
puts philosophy and theology, and Lonergan, trying to come in from the
cold of marginalization to meet with the (so often considered) more
legitimate and critical fields of study.

The problem of knowledge emerged
from within the differentiating, reversing, and conflicting movements
of the scientific revolution, or from a change of direction and
emphasis in vector-flow—from tradition and its Doctrine-as-knowledge from-above, to knowledge as developed from below and
supported by a body of evidence, regardless of tradition or religious
proclamations. The revolution exposed a gap in our thinking and laid
bare the question of the knowledge-truth-reality complex and
its relationship to doctrine (from above), and to doctrinal, religious,
and political authority. The whole project of knowledge needed to be
re-thought from bottom to top, as it were, and in terms of the ongoing
revolution. Knowledge of anything that wasn't rooted in the natural,
physical, or statistical sciences was now irretrievably in a vacuum in-between the two vectoral forces.

Clearly
knowledge was what the scientist could discover and prove in the
laboratory to every one's satisfaction. And even in commonsense
practical matters today, we find an “unpleasant ambiguity in an
assertion of principle” that is “not coupled with the evidence of fact”
(1958, p. 733; 2000, p. 755).

In this way, however, it “fell” to
the quasi-philosopher of the time, whose field (in part) is knowledge,
to now explain what the knowing-knowledge-truth complex really is, as a
now-necessary prerequisite for claiming that doctrine is also
knowledge. Over time, the lack of forthcoming, unified, and qualified
explanations, and the interminable technical arguments, opened the door
to the estrangement of philosophy and its various fields, including
ethics. (At this writing, ethics is enjoying an albeit pragmatic
comeback.) And it opened the door for psychology, logic, and the
statistical sciences to at least try to fill the void that is still the
real home of philosophical discourse--about meaning and the good, and
about objectivity and the knowledge-truth-real complex. (See King,
2009, Blog: Excerpt from Preface).

Appendix 2: Camp Mentality

We might compare the camp mentality in philosophy and (to a lesser degree)
in the human sciences and education with, for instance, Einstein’s
theories. Though Einstein’s name is attached to his theories,
physicists do not (seemingly arbitrarily) choose another theoretical or
conceptually-different camp that treats physics, special relativity,
and time, for instance, according to their different and un-inspected
foundational viewpoints. So that, in physics, the discoverer’s name
commonly follows the theory; whereas in the human sciences, etc., the
theories follow the names. Hence, various “camps” of thought have
emerged. And many papers and books that take Lonergan’s work as their
centerpiece often have “Lonergan” in their titles.

Appendix 3: Esoterica

Those who have read both of Lonergan’s major works,
Insight, A Study of Human Understanding (1958 &; 2000) and Method in Theology (1972),
will recognize my reference here to the difference in writing style and
delivery between the two works. Whereas Insight is thick, intricate,
and cavernous, Method In Theology feels like breathing fresh air, especially after having struggled through Insight with its “in the seventeenth place” esoterica (1958, p. 556; & 2000, p. 579)

On the good side, many Lonergan-savvy teachers presently teach in
undergraduate secular institutions adapting the work and even using Method in Theology,
etc., in variously-named philosophy, theology, and religion courses.
Here, teachers may easily convey that any field can benefit from the
insights found there, thereby gaining a larger audience for the work.
Even so, the question remains whether Method in Theology is
accessible for college undergraduates; or for non-theology students
involved in special or general studies; or for those new to any sort of
philosophical study; or for the easy consideration of administrators in
secular colleges and universities. My experience of using this text for
such students: It is not.

Insight is not always so difficult to read; however, Lonergan wrote Insight
with the scientist in mind; for a “sufficiently cultured
consciousness;” and for those already familiar with reading
philosophical history and its texts. For the teacher looking for
cognitional theory, or for the cultured renaissance reader who could
benefit greatly from Lonergan’s contributions, alas, Insight is
entirely too long and technical (1958, p. xxviii; & 2000, p. 11).
Thus, in reading Insight, the reader is asked to grasp a long
series of places, “in the twelfth place,” and B-C-D and E before
getting to Lonergan’s A. As such, Insight has a more foundational “punch” for the scientist, but is difficult for those who are not scientists; whereas, Method in Theology is a happier read for the teacher, or the literary scholar, or the renaissance reader. Even though Method In Theology offers
a more literary style and makes much quicker correlations between the
A-B-C’s developed there, it is still not undergraduate material.

Appendix 4: No Distinction between Religious/Theological and Philosophical Content

Many
who would benefit from Lonergan’s work mistakenly regard Lonergan as
“only” a Catholic or Christian theologian. With such wrong assumptions
of religious or theological intent in mind, the work is seen as not
really critical or applicable to the concerns of the more
secular-minded reader, or to the critical-theoretical fields, and
certainly cannot provide the philosophical underpinnings of fields of
study (e.g., through the functional specialties) (1972).

Of course we know that Lonergan has a vision of the whole which includes theology (see Insight’s epilogue) as not just another field of study, but as the wherewithal of a comprehensive view from what he means by the higher viewpoint. And of course, Lonergan contributes greatly to religious and theological persons and issues.

However,
(from my reading of him) he was also quite aware of the ever-present
need to open channels of communication to others who would gain first
from a philosophical appropriation of transcendental method and the underlying shifts of personal foundational meaning he referred to in terms of various correctives and conversions. In this regard, many writers and websites have not clearly distinguished between religious and philosophical issues.

Indeed,
such a wrong-headed critique (that Lonergan’s work is uncritical)
reveals a tension that rightly exists between secular and religious, if
not theological, arenas of thought; and those who understand Lonergan’s
meaning will recognize a moment of high irony in such a dismissal.

Further,
Lonergan was a Jesuit and spent his major intellectual work from within
the venue of theological and religious studies. His long-term study of
St. Thomas Aquinas is well-known throughout the circles of Lonergan
scholars. Moreover, because Lonergan was a major thinker who made major
contributions, many from his intellectual milieu have developed their
own work around what was basic to his.

The upshot of the above,
however, is that authors’ writings that emerge from having understood
Lonergan’s work are often published in relatively arcane publications
in the fields of academic philosophy, theology, and religion, often
developed in off-the-beaten-track conferences such as this one where,
in most cases, we are preaching to the choir.

Also, many writers
use the still-unknown “Lonergan” in their book titles; or maintain
their religious references there and in their subject matter; or they
maintain an esoteric language and presentation equal to or surpassing
Lonergan’s own (as in dissertations); or they continue to combine (and
confuse) foundational with topical treatment. In any of these cases,
and well-written or not, the movement of Lonergan’s contribution
through these writers, towards a larger audience of educators and
persons of good commonsense, is slow.

Appendix 5: Impediments on the Side of the Audience

First,
under the half-reflective view of such polymorphism, our present
project cannot be done critically, on principle. From this lens, only
the natural and physical sciences and their related fields, and maybe
statistics in some multi-blind studies, can provide authentic data or
the methods to approach such data; and consequently the data of these
fields are the only data we can be truly critical, unbiased, and
scientific about.

Second, under other aspects of such polymorphism, some harbor various versions of the view that anything goes. Here, everything is interpreted and
keeps changing, and so there is nothing really known, true, or real,
except maybe in a fuzzy sort of way. Here, all theorists, scholars, and
academicians are “liberal” and are really about ivory towers,
overblown-ego, and arbitrariness; and none has a lock on anything save
their own hubris, whatsoever, especially in the fields of education and
human studies. Such folks have nary a ground, no umbrella, no net, no
guide and no practical connection whatsoever with concrete truth or
reality, no workable or non-arbitrary vision for the future; and
further, they all should stop looking for one. Anything they say, in
fact, is just subjective, personal, and sentimental bias; and only a
too-soft heart will listen (bleed), and then only out of a similarly
ungrounded sense of social indulgence. And paying attention to social
amenities or tearful anecdotes can hardly be called “scientific.”

Third,
and mixed within the above views, are those who think all real and
objective knowledge can never have a personal component, or have an
intimate dimension and, at the same time, remain objective knowledge.
There indeed is a reality, but subjectivity has little or nothing to do
with it. Though half-reflective views emerge in different arguments for
different reasons, in unreflective living, commonsense ethics rules the
day (born of our given fundamental thrust), and it’s a good thing
considering the alternatives.

Fourth, the view from
either assumption is that, though some “big names” are attractive, can
write well, and have careers, a philosopher, of all people, will never
discover or be able to explain to us in reasonable terms how our
studies, our natural science, our ethics, our politics, and our
education all fit together and point towards a future. Obvious
self-contradictions aside, from either view, if there is a “rock” to
build on, no one has found it, given theory to it, or expects anyone to
listen if they do; for on principle, it cannot be done (Lonergan, 1972,
pp. 19-20). And by the way, there is no rock, but there is only hard
science and clouds, and even then we are not really certain.

Fifth,
dogmatism closes over all half-reflective counter-positions. From
closure, we are unwillingness to either take on a long self-development
project or to change old and deeply ingrained habits of mind. In fact,
we are closed to the project of philosophical development and
self-correction that Lonergan offers.

It goes without saying
that, under the influence of such polymorphic foundations, philosophy
as a reflection on those foundations, and on knowledge, etc., is ruled
out of court at the start. Ethics, of course, follows suit—it just works for me,
or it is a wispy idealized adjunct to the “hard sciences,” carried
about in the briefcases of good, worried, but painfully sentimental
professors who feel, if they do not understand, the political writing
on the wall. On one view, neither philosophy nor ethics is hard science. On another view, neither really matters anyway, so what is the point?

As
un-scrutinized, our polymorphic assumptions emerge from the half-light
of fuzzy thought set up in static cul-de-sacs in the mind; and, more
importantly, only one of these assumptions matches the deeper, equally
exigent assumptions of scientists or persons of good common
sense--assumptions that come into play when they actually move forward
in any field of inquiry, whether in concrete human living that is
inexorably good, or in building speculative and-or verified theory in
any science. As un-scrutinized, what is basic to us continues to work.

As
far as going forward while performing a philosophical contradiction is
concerned, persons who perform such a feat, and who claim to be
philosophers, "feat themselves" right out of the argument and the
community of persons who are taking seriously their efforts to
understand. We need pay as much attention to their self-contradictions
as we do to mad-persons.

And so we have conflicting sets of
assumptions and several lenses to look through. We look through one
lens (basic) when we go forward in any field of discourse where
knowledge is developed and where things get done. And we look through
another lens when we think about what we are doing with our
philosophical inheritance in place (self-contradictions, as above).
That is, when science and commonsense work well, they do so from
employing a right set of assumptions and lenses about the
good-knowledge-true-real complex we all live in. It is when we start
thinking about our philosophical assumptions, or when we are
challenged, that we forget what we already have and work with, and what
already works for and in us—rightly in most cases throughout history,
and begin to think with our incomplete and-or distorted philosophical
inheritance.

Our point of course is that getting philosophical attention is not an easy task.

Appendix 6: Conclusion to Part 1

At
this writing I think it fair to assume that Lonergan’s contribution has
not reached the K-12 setting in any systematic way; and I know of no
integration of Lonergan’s work in formal K-12 curriculum theory, though
I hope I am wrong in this. That being said, and besides fostering the
art of self-appropriation-affirmation, the work of a
researcher-scholar familiar with transcendental method and surrounding
literature is, in part, that of developing a dialectical analysis of
present theory in different aspects of curriculum, much of which is
good if not fully functional (For example: Ornstein & Hunkins,
2004). For, many in education have broken through their positivist
inheritance in fact if not as reflectively philosophical.

It
remains that such analysis and critique is slow-to-non-existent; and,
at the present rate and for years to come, many students will go
through the academy without being introduced to the kind of
self-knowledge that is now available to us through a full understanding
and personal verification of transcendental method with or without a full understanding of its spiritual or religious import.

Regardless
of his present limited (albeit growing) audience, Lonergan’s
contribution is relevant to the larger philosophical project in the
academic fields, to cultural studies, and to the foundations of the
education of persons. Lonergan clearly knew that his work has vast
implications for the foundations of the academy; for the philosophy of
education and its various subsets; for cultural studies; for
philosophy; and for any variously named departments of study--not to
mention for statisticians and scientists involved in studies of the
natural-physical world, cognition, and the brain. Also, his work
self-consciously reaches beneath and far beyond the sciences and
theology, though not beyond the scientist, the theologian and the
renaissance reader, as critical thinkers in an increasingly complex
world.

Section 2

Appendix 7: Comprehensive Self-Understanding as Goal

Again,
there exists a need to bring the work to education and to add to the
increasing body of access-literature written for those who will benefit
greatly from being exposed to Lonergan’s many contributions to
philosophy, not to mention theology. The theoretical work is seminal,
generic, complex, comprehensive, innovative and unique. Precisely
because of the sweep of Lonergan’s contributions, they can benefit from
the establishment of a clear pedagogical method--a set of
stepping-stones--not towards “Lonergan’s theory,” but towards a
specified critical-objective, but also quite personal
self-understanding for each of us, including both the person of good
commonsense and the scientist who fully embraces scientific method and
all of its critical canons.

Transcendental method is about, and continually points to, such self-understanding:

Further, many good writings exist in the vein of mediating Lonergan’s work,
e.g., The Lonergan Reader (Morelli, 1997). And many themes have been
abstracted from Lonergan’s work and treated separately while
maintaining the integrity of the treatise and-or the specific
coursework—where the whole of self-appropriation is not the aim. However, the driving question for me still remained: How to isolate and bring the centerpiece of the work--self-appropriation-affirmation,
and the pearl of self-reflection--to teachers in a curricular format
for education (for my field interest) and an offering to other fields,
again, without vulgarizing or telescoping the work, or without writing
another book like Insight?

Nine years ago, I started with the
set of insights--that still holds nine years later—by isolating and
developing an abstracted experiment towards consciously and critically
coming to know one’s own mind. The relatively brief experiment contains
a critically established proof, as it were, of the inner structure and
functioning of one’s own mind. However, at that time, and in my
naiveté, I expected too much of it—I expected, if not a “single leap,”
as it were (p. xxiii & p. 17), at least a better result. Though I
wouldn’t call it a vulgarization, the experiment didn’t carry with it
the foundational insights that I had naively expected to occur.

Appendix 8: Teachers Today, and the Purpose of the Moving Viewpoint

Most
teachers in my experience have a deep-set but unsaid resonance with the
longer journey, and a felt conflict with an over-emphasis on teaching
to what I am calling the shorter journey. Many try to serve their
deeper sense of what is right and actually teach to the longer journey
of understanding, as our students are also given to strive for it.
However, much of the policy and practice surrounding the institution of
education is on the shorter, telescoped, and should I say vulgarized,
track with much pressure to continue on that track.

At least for
education, that need is to provide a clear pedagogical method that can
be used directly in, or transposed into, other knowledge fields.
Further, such pedagogy will show how the theory is related to our
“sense experience.” The task, then, was to write a text that
distinguishes, but also to maintain the relationship between, what I am
calling the longer and shorter philosophical journeys.

For
the reader-experimenter, the task is to at least become aware of the
essence of and potential for the longer philosophical journey
(suffering through one’s own long and painstaking philosophical
development and self-correction) that, generally, are the central
themes of Lonergan’s body of work. Thus, the structure of the text must
distinguish but also relate (1) a relatively brief experiment and its
singular A-Z intent from (2) other more comprehensive and
life-qualifying meanings associated with foundational study. Those
deeper meanings are about developing our powers of critical
self-awareness and understanding and, through that development,
increasing our self-knowledge and abilities to self-correct. And those
meanings of mind and spirit are potential to occur only in that longer
journey, however it is made—Lonergan is speaking of that longer journey
in his declaration that he couldn’t deliver Insight in two weeks.

Further, as Lonergan states he uses a moving viewpoint in writing his Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1958
& 2000). He does so because he is not only talking about insights
and surrounding cognitional process, but also because he is trying to
inspire a set of sometimes-startling insights and changes of horizon to
occur in the reader. Thus, he hopes to draw his readers in to a fuller,
and intimately personal, self-understanding. The process, hopefully,
will supply us with both the philosophical development and the
historical correctives that are central to his contribution to
philosophical thought and that underlie the self-appropriation/affirmation that is his fundamental aim.

Thus, in engaging Insight,
we are not merely learning what a particular philosopher thinks, but we
are also applying that thought—manifest in a well-developed theory--to
our own thought processes and testing our philosophical assumptions as
we go through the reading.

The hoped-for outcome of moving
through a complex text in this way is to inspire gradual growth in
reader’s self-understanding and to challenge readers’ present
philosophical foundations so that, perhaps, we can slowly develop
different “eyes” after having engaged it. Here, I mean by eyes that we
already have a set of philosophical lenses through which we “look” and,
thus, through which we approach all old and new meaning. Such is the
metaphorical meaning of the foundations of a house or the boundaries of
a football game. Like anything else, however, these lenses can be our
objects of analysis and critique. Such a self-understanding can result
in life-changing insights, self-corrections, and formidable changes of
horizon and direction. More generally speaking, such reflections can
result in our becoming consciously aware of our own deepening of spirit
as it occurs.

Lonergan’s writings are complex; and they include
many references to the inexorably intimate, universal, and concrete;
and as Frederick Crowe suggests, they follow a long arch of universal
and historical vision (Crowe, 2002, p. 15). Insight, however, is over
800 pages long; and none of Lonergan’s writings are known as “easy
reads.” At this time in our philosophical history in academia, the
writings are commonly reserved for post-graduate study, unless severely
interpreted, abbreviated, or modified from course to course.

The
insight that I needed to add to the original experiment was this:
Anything both short and philosophical must have and show a clearly
recognizable context, and it must give proper reference and place to
what I have named the longer journey. It must begin by
explaining the relationship of the experiment with the experimenter’s
“sense experience,” and it must be set in the clear recognition of a
field of personal experience and development where deeper insights and
self-corrections are understood as potential to all, are the aim, and
are overtly invited to occur.

Anyone who has read a text more than once knows that, with each new reading,
the meaning changes, and often increases. Often we can approach a text
for the second or third time from a different horizon--a horizon
changed for us by the first reading.

However, those who have read both of Lonergan’s major works, Insight, A Study of Human Understanding (1958 & 2000) and Method in Theology (1972), will recognize my reference here to the difference in writing style and delivery between the two works. Whereas Insight is thick, intricate, and cavernous, Method In Theology feels like breathing fresh air, especially after having struggled through Insight with its “in the seventeenth place” esoterica. For example, in his chapter in Insight, “Metaphysics as Dialectic,” Lonergan relates:

. . . let us suppose that a writer proposes to communicate some insight (A) to a
reader. Then by an insight (B) the writer will grasp the reader’s
habitual accumulation of insights (C); by a further insight (D) he will
grasp the deficiencies in insight (E) that must be made up before the
reader can grasp the insight (A); finally, the writer must reach a
practical set of insights (F) that will govern his verbal flow, the
shaping of his sentences, their combination into paragraphs, the
sequence of paragraphs in chapters and of chapters in books. Clearly,
this practical insight (F) differs notably from the insight (A) to be
communicated. It is determined by the insight (A) as its principal
objective. But it is also determined by the insight (B) which settles
both what the writer need not explain and, no less, the resources of
language on which he can rely to secure effective communication.
Further, it is determined by the insight (D) which fixes a subsidiary
goal that has to be attained if the principal goal is to be reached.
Finally, the expression will be a failure in the measure that insights
(B) and (D) miscalculate the habitual development (C) and the relevant
deficiencies (E) of the anticipated reader. . . .It follows, then, that properly
speaking expression is not true or false. (1958, p. 556 & 2000, p. 579)

It is not always like this in Insight. However, Lonergan wrote Insight
with the scientist in mind; for a “sufficiently cultured
consciousness;” and for those already familiar with reading
philosophical history and its texts. For the teacher looking for cognitional theory, or for the cultured renaissance reader who could benefit greatly from Lonergan’s contributions, alas and however, Insight is entirely too long, technical and esoteric [8] (1958, p. xxviii & 2000, p. 11).

Thus, in reading Insight, the reader is asked to understand B-C-D and E before getting to Lonergan’s A. Whereas Method In Theology
offers a more literary style and makes much quicker correlations
between the A-B-C’s developed there and the personal interior of the
reader. As such, Insight has a more foundational “punch” for the scientist, but is difficult for those who are not scientists; whereas, Method in Theology is a happier read for the teacher, or the literary scholar, or the renaissance reader.

The further problem with Method in Theology, however, is that it was apparently
written explicitly for theologians; or at least an unknowing reader
must presume so by a cursory review of the book’s title and by its many
references to theology and theologians.

Moreover, many college
and university teachers presently teach from the point of view of
having understood Lonergan’s contributions. For instance, “Lonerganian”
teachers in undergraduate secular institutions may order Method in Theology
for their students in variously-named philosophy of religion courses.
After doing so, teachers may easily convey that, in this work,
Lonergan’s more comprehensive philosophical insights are transformed
and adapted to theology; but that any field will benefit from such
transformation and adaptation. In this way, savvy teachers can mediate
Lonergan’s contribution to philosophy-proper through the use of Method in Theology,
and direct students to relate it to different concerns thereby gaining a larger audience for the work.

Even so, the question remains whether Method in Theology
is accessible for college undergraduates; or for non-theology students
involved in special or general studies; or for those new to any sort of
philosophical study; or for the easy consideration of administrators in
secular colleges and universities. My experience of using this text for
such students: It is not.

Regardless of his present
limited (albeit growing) audience, Lonergan’s contribution is to the
larger philosophical project in the academic fields, to the cultural
studies, and to the foundations of the education of persons. Lonergan
clearly knew that his work has vast implications for the foundations of
the academy; for the philosophy of education and its various subsets;
for cultural studies; for philosophy; and for any variously named
departments of study--not to mention for statisticians and scientists
involved in studies of the natural-physical world, cognition, and the
brain. Also, his work self-consciously reaches beneath and far beyond
the sciences and theology, though not beyond the scientist, the
theologian and the renaissance reader, as critical thinkers in an
increasingly complex world.

In fact, however, it is not so easy to leave the subject outside one's calculations .... (1958, p. 408; & 2000, p. 433)

Thus, I appreciate greatly Lonergan’s genius, his efforts at creating a
dialogue with scientists, his forays into the philosophy of education,
and his great contribution to method in theology. However, I also
recognize the implied limitation in readership that Insight’s esoterica and Method’s
theological references present. Precisely because of the creative
import of his work, it needs to “get out there” in ways that transcend
both problems in appealing to a more general reader-access.

Further,
Lonergan was a Jesuit and spent his major intellectual work from within
the venue of theological and religious studies. His long-term study of
St. Thomas Aquinas is well-known throughout the circles of Lonergan
scholars. Moreover, because Lonergan was a major thinker who made major
contributions, many from his intellectual milieu have developed their
own work around what was basic to his.

However, the writing
emerging from these works is often published in relatively arcane
publications in the fields of academic philosophy, theology, and
religion. Also, many writers use the still-unknown “Lonergan” in their
book titles; or maintain their religious references there and in their
subject matter; or they maintain an esoteric language and presentation
equal to or surpassing Lonergan’s own. In any of these cases, and
well-written or not, the movement of Lonergan’s contribution through
these writers towards a larger audience of educators and persons of
good commonsense is slow.

Also, many who would benefit from
Lonergan’s work mistakenly regard Lonergan as “only” a Catholic or
Christian theologian. Some might argue that, though remarkably
intelligent, after all, Lonergan is speaking only from a belief, faith,
doctrinal, ideological or classicist set of views. If the critique is
true, and by secular and critical-methodological standards, such
arguments would rightly render Lonergan’s work irrelevant to all but
the most devoted of religious followers. Indeed, such a critique
reveals a tension that rightly exists between secular and religious
domains. However, this critique of Lonergan’s work is fundamentally
wrongheaded, and those who understand Lonergan’s meaning will recognize
a moment of high irony in such a dismissal. As such, a brief
description of the sweep of Lonergan’s contribution is appropriate to
this section of the present work:

Though Lonergan was indeed a
Jesuit, he was also a philosopher of the first order. As such, we can
read his work from a philosophical point of view without taking into
consideration his religious foundations, one way or the other. That is,
his work is fully critical.

Further, as a philosopher,
Lonergan was a critical generalist who gathers in the insights from a
long history of philosophical thought and brings them into view under a
creative and critical venue. Thus, transcendental method fully
embraces science and its empirical method—by defining knowledge in its
most critical-empirical way and by methodologically clarifying, and
setting up the conditions for us to verify, the empirical ground of all
knowledge fields. That ground can be found in the actual structure and
dynamism of human cognition—in everyone’s, and especially yours, which
is the fundamental focus of this work. Further, it can be found in the
actual historical unfolding and development of human knowledge (1958,
p. 387; & 2000, p. 412).

Thus, if we begin from the point of
view of Catholic scholarship and Christian education, Lonergan’s
contribution is to theology and to the foundations of religion. This
contribution includes a critical view of classicist thought, ideology,
doctrine, logic, and the philosophical dimension of theological
studies. Here, the philosophical assumptions of the theologian are
called into question and laid open for self-critical review (or what we
will refer to as foundational review).

Therefore,
Lonergan’s work explicitly requires of the theologian a critical
openness towards, and active critique of, the theologian’s own
philosophical inheritance (their intentionality analysis and foundational review),
their own minds and methods, their own biases, and the underpinnings of
all specific church doctrine. For Lonergan, then, philosophy provides
the critical, edifying, negative-dialectic for theological and for
religious studies. Far from portraying philosophy as the “handmaiden of
religion,” this work portrays philosophy as the empirically verifiable
source of critique for the theologian and for theology. Also, Lonergan
did not place himself or his work outside of such a critique.

On
the other hand, and from the point of view of secular education and the
history of thought, Lonergan’s contribution is to the critical
philosophy underpinning all domains of thought, both personal and
scientific, and both writ-small and writ-large. Here, Lonergan is in
communication with the philosophical tradition as a whole, and with the
various schools of thought that have emerged from the one cultural
root, including those in the philosophy of history.

Considering again Lonergan’s writings, Method in Theology
holds philosophical insights that are highly relevant to all thinkers
in all knowledge fields. However, again, those insights remain obscured
by the book’s title, its intended audience of theologians, and its
example of and adaptation to theology. Thus, many highly intelligent
thinkers, who may have neither “formulated nor scrutinized” their own
sets of assumptions, can fail to be introduced to a body of work that
provides a systematic and critical avenue for such scrutiny and
formulation.

On the other hand, though Insight
is written for the scientifically minded person, it is not exactly a weekend read.
That being said, throughout Insight
we find a continued formulation and reference to the personal
scrutinizing experiment of self-reference for any thinker in any
knowledge field:

To affirm knowing it is
useless to peer inside, for the dynamic pattern is to be found not in
this or that act but in the unfolding of mathematics, empirical
science, common sense, and philosophy; in that unfolding must be
grasped the pattern of knowing and, if one feels inclined to doubt that
the pattern really exists, then one can try the experiment of
attempting to escape experience, to renounce intelligence in inquiry,
to desert reasonableness in critical reflection.
(Lonergan, 1958, p. 416 & 2000, p. 441)

In all of his writings Lonergan rejects an arbitrary dismissal of, or an arbitrary acceptance of,
transcendental or general empirical method.
Further, Lonergan invokes the present disunity in-and-between all
knowledge fields; and he relates a misunderstanding of the
experience-of-inquiry as cause for the present disarray in our
foundations of thought. As a critical approach to that disarray, a
thorough engagement with Method in Theology finds, first, transcendental method and self-appropriation identified as not only in and for theologians but also in and for all persons (writ-small).

Second, we find that Lonergan developed the functional specialties as an expression of an heuristic structure of being--as an explicit metaphysics--drawn from an analysis of transcendental method
and from its match with the unfolding of human knowledge in history. As
such, he presents a clear view of the philosophical underpinnings of
all knowledge fields, institutions, and cultures (writ-large) (1972,
Chaps. 5-14). Moreover, again, such functional specialties are far from arbitrarily formed. Rather, they emerge from the data available for review of conscious structure:

For self-appropriation is of itself a grasp of transcendental method, and
that grasp provides one with the tools not only for an analysis of
common sense procedures, but also for the differentiation of the
sciences and the construction of their methods. (1972, p. 83)

The work is bold, but bold is what we need.

Further,
included in the knowledge fields, of course, is the integrative field
of the philosophy of education, as well as curriculum development and
classroom teaching where we come into communication with the political,
social, ethical and spiritual dimensions of consciousness and culture.

Third, beyond the import of self-appropriation on individual persons, and beyond the import of the functional specialties on the unity of all knowledge fields and institutions, transcendental method is a general theory that points to conscious structure as a trans-cultural base.
Such a base is universal, verifiable in everyone and every culture, and
imports on all persons, culture, and history (1972, pp. 282-3). Thus,
again, Lonergan draws into theory the underlying base and ground of all
knowledge fields and cultures. He develops that ground from the broad
outlines of all human understanding; and that understanding is rooted
in the dynamism of our own cognitional structure. From that theoretical
understanding, we can call up our own conscious structure for its
analysis and verification; and indeed, that calling-up is what the
present work is fundamentally about. As such, we finally can include
ourselves in our notions of objectivity without sinking into a quagmire
of "mere subjectivity" from which there is "no exit."

Further,
those who spend any time with Lonergan’s work, as a rule, come away
with the right notion that this person was, indeed, a first-rate
philosopher; that he addresses the long-arch of human history and the
place of science in it in post-modern life; and that his work is yet to
be felt in the world in ways that it should be, and most probably will
be.

The above is only a brief description of the sweep of an
otherwise thorough-going, creative, and critical development in 20th
century philosophical thought--thought that I hope will have great
developmental and corrective influence in the 21st century.

Catherine B. King is a philosopher and educator with expertise on the work of Bernard Lonergan, S.J. She teaches courses in the foundations of education and in applications in action research at the Department of Education, National University, San Diego, California, USA.